Comcast merger also endangers ‘neutral’ Internet access

The merger agreement between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, and the implications for net neutrality, should be completed sometime in the next year between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM. (ScriptingNews)

In San Francisco, Comcast’s service garners a rating of 1.5 stars on Yelp. The city’s Department of Motor Vehicles offices boast a rating twice as high. So even though Comcast argues the recent merger with Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock is all about consumers, those 680 Yelp reviews indicate how the company’s dedication to consumers has worked out so far.

The merger would bring Comcast’s nationwide television subscriber numbers to 23 million and Internet subscribers to 32.3 million, according to WSJ. Combine that with Comcast also owning NBCUniversal and this new media behemoth raises a lot of questions about competition.

But it also puts the spotlight back on “net neutrality”, one of the critical tech catchphrases that encapsulates regulations on how you consume — and pay for — content on the Internet. Understanding the concept, history and ramifications of how further consolidating media entities could affect digital choice, becomes paramount. Providers like Comcast tend to promise a “free and open” Internet, but their definition may vary wildly from a consumer’s.

As Fortune writer Dan Primack quipped, “I wonder if net neutrality would be more popular if legislation was named the Stop Comcast Act of 2014.”

In an ideal setting, consumers get choice for Internet providers. They’d consider a wide variety of packages to get their digital content and make a decision from there. But reality hasn’t played out like that. San Francisco, for instance, does have alternative providers like MonkeyBrains, but through infrastructure contracts Comcast and AT&T, to a degree, maintain a stranglehold on the city’s digital pipes.

So lacking infrastructure choice, the concept of net neutrality has tried to reduce digital constraints for consumers. The ideals for “net neutrality” go back to arguments made by Lawrence Lessig, but as Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who coined the term, puts it, “The idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.” He points out that an electricity provider doesn’t care if you plug in a toaster or your television — wattage is wattage. So, data should be data.

Without regulation, Comcast could charge additional fees for you to access Google or Netflix or, more likely, charge Google or Netflix additional fees to access you. Until recently those concerns were held at bay by the FCC. But in January a US Appeals court ruled the FCC’s own “net neutrality” rules said the governing body didn’t have the power to enforce them.

A MonkeyBrains technician attempting to give San Francisco more choice for its Internet provider. (Twitter)

Now, having racked up $15.7 billion in sales last quarter, charging Google a little extra might seem fine, especially since it has its own ISP aspirations. But the worry is that smaller websites, without big checkbooks, would not be able to afford Comcast’s digital tolls, relegating their now-slower sites to the backpages of the Internet. Our patience for plodding websites drops every day. One of the beauties of today’s Internet is that a website’s speed is not determined by a middleman picking favorites.

Even if your content consumption habits fall to mostly larger, traditional sites, consider that Time Warner (TW Cable’s former parent company) owns HBO. Theoretically, access to HBO — how excited are you for Game of Thrones? — would speed up while all of a sudden a competitor like Netflix — how excited are you for House of Cards? — would be stuck in the slow lane. Netflix has tried to shame slow providers with a public leaderboard of Internet speeds, but that clout diminishes if Comcast (14th on the list) and Time Warner Cable(6th) join forces.

And if you think TV and Twitter rot your brain, consider Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association disappointment when the FCC lost its case to Verizon.

“Now that the Internet has become the primary mechanism for delivering information, services and applications to the general public, it is especially important that commercial Internet Service Providers are not able to control or manipulate the content of these communications.”

Some free market fans and, of course, service providers argue a service provider tampering and monetizing feeds equates to fair practice. After all, Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and others do pay an awful lot to maintain their network — they should be able to charge tolls as it pleases, the argument goes.

But with such narrow consumer choice to get Internet access in the first place — again, Comcast’s 1.5 stars on Yelp — that claim rings pretty hollow. As Wu notes, “Discriminatory, private networks can be extremely useful for other purposes. [Net neutrality] suggests that there is such a thing as a neutral public network.”

And it’s important to note that serious net neutrality proponents are not asking for a handout. As Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the central protocols of the Web, notes, “Net Neutrality is not asking for the internet for free. Net Neutrality is not saying that one shouldn’t pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.” The point is that if one end of the digital pipe has one level of service quality, the other end should receive that same level without someone taxing the transmission between at different levels.

The concern with Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s merger is that this potential throttling would be brought under one roof. They don’t compete in local markets today, but the aggregate clout means a stronger position when negotiating with content providers. And Comcast has already confirmed that it has selectively tampered with Internet speeds in the past.

Regulators have blocked big provider mergers, so this isn’t a done deal. In 2011 they halted one between AT&T and T-Mobile. But as the Wall Street Journalnotes, “The proposed alliance of the nation’s two biggest cable companies carries a plethora of unknowns into the regulatory debate, lending hope to both supporters and foes.” Vocal supporters outside the provider industry are hard to find, but activist foes, fearing further consolidation of power, like Public Knowledge, Common Cause, and Free Press are in full supply.

But in the end, whether the merger goes through, proponents of net neutrality, often gun-shy about the government stepping in to regulate the digital flow of information, tend to ask for federal help. There has never been a net neutrality law.

“A full 25 percent of Californians do not have high-speed Internet access at home and they are being left farther behind,” says California Emerging Technology Fund CEO Sunne Wright McPeak. “This requires focused attention from both government and industry leaders. That’s why we are calling on federal regulators to provide the most rigorous review to insure that all Americans have access to affordable broadband service.”

“Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can’t photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.”

[This article has clarified Time Warner as Time Warner Cable’s former parent company]